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ACADEMIC CAPITAL OR SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS?A Critique of Studies of Kibbutz Stratification

Reuven Shapira, Ph.D.Western Galilee Academic College, Israel

Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, Mobile Post Hefer, Israel 38810shapi_ra@gan.org.il

Why did six decades of kibbutz studies not discover the existence of complex social stratification?This curious blindness is explained by the dominance of a coalition in the study of this complexsocial field, which includes both kibbutzim and federative organizations. The uniqueness ofkibbutzim enabled this coalition to perpetuate a series of partial truisms, including a supposed lackof stratification. Critics have exposed some degree of status differentiation but ignored the primaryevidence of stratification and missed its true extent. The author’s desire to address his own society’sproblems led him to engage in a “long effort applied to oneself which [converted] . . . one’s wholeview of . . . the social world” (Bourdieu 1990:16), and this view exposed the true extent ofstratification in this social field. Thus, the motivation to reform the kibbutz led to a level ofunderstanding which traditional academic research had not achieved, supporting Whyte’s (1992)assertion that social scientists must seek social theories for action, not for pure knowledge, andWallerstein’s (2004) thesis that division of the social sciences and humanities into separatedisciplines hinders scientific progress.

. . . one cannot be satisfied with an explanatory model incapable of differentiating peoplewhom ordinary intuition in the specific universe tells us are quite different (Bourdieu, inWacqaunt 1989:7–8).

THE KIBBUTZ IS WIDELY RECOGNIZED as Israel’s most interesting social creation. Interest in it has1

indeed lessened significantly of late, however, owing to the debt crisis into which the kibbutzmovement sank and from which it was rescued by massive public financial assistance, leading toa mass exodus and adoption for the most part of capitalistic norms which transformed the communalculture (Ben-Rafael 1997; Rosolio 1999). Nevertheless, this relatively small segment of modernIsraeli society—270 kibbutzim totaling some 125,000 inhabitants—has served as a subject ofthousands of studies by hundreds of students for some sixty years. Faced with this huge researcheffort, it is natural to expect that kibbutzim would be a well-understood social field (sensu Bourdieu1977). And since the kibbutz is supposedly egalitarian, what should be more studied and understoodthan the extent of its egalitarianism and the lack of stratification? How is it that some scholars (e.g.,Rosner 1991; Shur 1987; Talmon 1972) have not recognized the tangible evidence of stratification,while others (Ben-Rafael and Yaar 1992; Bowes 1989; Fadida 1972; Kressel 1974; Shapira 1987,1990, 1992; Topel 1979) have detected three, four, or even more strata? Historians have depictedlifelong heads of main kibbutz federations—termed “the Movements”—as very powerful andprestigious figures, seemingly a top social stratum (Beilin 1984; Kafkafi 1992, 1998; Kanari 2003;Kynan 1989; Near 1997; Tzachor 1997, 2004), but only one ethnographer, Rosenfeld (1951),depicted Movement officials as constituting a top stratum in a kibbutz. Her anthropologicalcolleagues have depicted the top stratum as the 12–15 members who rotated main local officesamong themselves (Spiro 1955), a kibbutz’s chief economic officers (Schwartz 1955; Vallier 1962),the four members who circulated between main local offices and Movement jobs (Fadida 1972), thethree managers of a kibbutz’s plants (Kressel 1974), the three patrons whose clients managed a

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kibbutz (Topel 1979), a few veteran officers (Bowes 1989), or the head of the ruling economicclique (Schwartz and Naor 2000). For sociologists, the top stratum was either the main officers ofeach kibbutz (Landshut 1944); the 20% of members with the greatest authority, prestige, andinfluence (Ben-Rafael and Yaar 1992); the technocrats who managed the main branches of a kibbutz(Ben-Rafael 1996); or the local oligarchs (Rosolio 1999:29).

Ordinary intuition rejects these views in favor of histories and deputies’ testimonies (Cohen2000; Shem-Tov 1997; Shure 2001; Vilan 1993) wherein the top stratum was said to be composedof the heads of the largest Movements: Itzhak Tabenkin of the Kibbutz Meuchad (hereafter KM),and Me’ir Yaari and Yaakov Hazan of the Kibbutz Artzi (KA). These Movements represented75–80% of all kibbutz members up to 1952, and some two-thirds afterwards. For half a century, theyalso dominated as heads of affiliated national parties and Knesset (parliament) members whonominated cabinet ministers. They also chose hundreds of KM and KA functionaries to becomeMovement staff members and decided policies and actions, acting as heads of Hasidic courts knownas Admors. Common sense tells us that any analysis of stratification is flawed if it ignores the2

outward signs of these leaders’ guru-like superiority (see Tzachor 2004). Admors were known notonly to every kibbutz member, but also to most Israelis via the news media, and via their keynoteaddresses at KM, KA, and party conventions, executive meetings, and cadre seminars. They wroteideological books, censored Movement and party publications, hobnobbed with national leaders, androde in chauffeured, ministerial-style cars (Aharoni 2000; Beilin 1984; Halamish 2003; Kanari 2003;Keshet 1995; Shure 2001; Tzachor 1997, 2004; Vilan 1993).

The inadequacy of the analysis is also clear from the variety of etiologies that have beenproposed for kibbutz stratification, which are as follows: The power of kibbutz chief officers is aresult of access to better information (Landshut 1944:87); differential prestige is due to theleadership roles held by veterans of the kibbutz movement (Rosenfeld 1951); control of the kibbutzeconomy made economic officers dominant (Vallier 1962); acquiring higher education andcirculating between main local offices, emissaries abroad, and Movement jobs (Fadida 1972),continuous management of a kibbutz’s plants (Kressel 1974), or patronage of clients who held mainlocal offices (Topel 1979) bred dominance; differential longevity among members led to control byveterans (Bowes 1989); differential authority, prestige, and influence of roles created stratification(Ben-Rafael and Yaar 1992); technocracy led to power differentiation (Ben-Rafael 1996); rotationof main offices among a few members bred oligarchy (Rosolio 1999:29); and heading of a powerclique within the kibbutz’s economic committee bred supremacy (Schwartz and Naor 2000).

How can one account for such a variety of explanations? Researchers were apparently blindto the existence of stratification created by the steep hierarchies of thousands of functionaries calledpe’ilim (meaning “activists”; singular: pa’il) who administered the Movements and hundreds ofother regional and national federative organizations, 36 types of equal partnerships of some or manykibbutzim through which most relations with the encompassing society were managed. There weresome 250–300 federative organizations in which some 4,500–5,000 pe’ilim administered almosttwenty thousand hired employees (Shapira 2001, n.d.a: chap. 5). The researchers looked forevidence of stratification only in the flat organizational structures of democratic kibbutzim, withshort-term officers of relatively low power and prestige, no privileges, and limited authority, whileignoring hierarchic and autocratic federative organizations whose pe’ilim were clearly stratified bydifferential power, authority, prestige, privileges, and job tenure.

My conclusion is that previous researchers were indeed blind to reality. In this paper I willoutline the main facts and factors of stratification, supported by ethnographic examples, but I willnot attempt a full analysis, which will be found in a forthcoming book. The academic blindness tothe existence of stratification raises troubling questions: How did it come about, and why did such

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a substantial body of research fail to expose it? Was an inadequate paradigm used because it serveda dominant coalition’s interest in academic capital and epistemic authority (Bourdieu 1988; Collins1975: chap. 9; Gieryn 1999)? Did communitarian epistemic cultures (Knorr-Cetina 1999) causeconformity to this paradigm? Did the failure to integrate findings by different disciplines cause themyopia, and if so, why did ethnographers not integrate them? What lessons can this add to recentcritiques of ethnography (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992; Hammersley 1992; Van Maanen 1995)?Does this case support Wallerstein’s (2004) thesis that the division of social sciences and thehumanities into separate disciplines hinders scientific progress?

This paper is divided into three parts. In the first, the mistaken image of kibbutzim is exposedand the main errors of the customary view are clarified. The second part explains the origins andlongevity of the blindness, and the third explores its exposure, in particular the “long effort appliedto oneself which [converted] . . . one’s whole view of . . . the social world” (Bourdieu 1990:16), aview which exposed the true extent of stratification. The conclusions call for the shaping of newtypes of academic careers that include periods of social action and involve various researchers ineach other’s fieldwork and analysis, as well as adequate support for the huge research investmentrequired for preventing such blindness, and a revision of decision-making norms for publication thatcurrently suppress radical thinkers.

THE BLINDNESS TO KIBBUTZ STRATIFICATION

. . . modernism privileges understanding at the expense of seeing. In effect, explanations andinterpretative schemes inculcate blindness to concrete existence (Linstead et al. 1996:7,citing Hugo Letiche).

In order to explain the kibbutz phenomenon, researchers have followed the paradigm used forstudying communal societies that isolated themselves from the outside world (Oved 1988; Pitzer1997), but kibbutzim, as pioneers of Israeli society, were heavily involved in “the outside world”both directly and through the Movements and many other federative organizations. They belonged“to a Kibbutz Movement, the Histadrut and the Labor Movement” (Rosner 1991:1), and therefore3

“cannot be understood outside this context” (Rosolio 1993:10). For this reason the use of thecommunal societies paradigm led to academic myopia since, unlike in the cases of other communalsocieties, the encompassing federative organizations and Israeli society impacted social organizationwithin kibbutzim. Researchers found stratification to be primarily an outcome of amassing power,and tangible and intangible capital by which privileges that furthered power and capital wereobtained (Bourdieu 1977; Collins 1975; Harris 1990:357–86; Lenski 1966; Michels 1959 [1911];Weber 1946). Hence, when a Movement amassed power over its kibbutzim, its pe’ilim could enjoyadvantages rarely found in local kibbutz offices (except for a minority of capitalist-like kibbutzimwith mass hired labor and permanent, privileged autocratic managers [Kressel 1974, 1983]). At theirpeak, in the mid-1980s, the two main Movements, which represented almost all the kibbutzim,comprised dozens of subsidiaries, including a national party and a major stake in one of Israel’s tworuling parties, youth organizations with hundreds of branches in Israel and abroad, daily and weeklynewspapers, quarterly journals, publishing houses, printing plants, research institutes, colleges,seminaries, museums, psychology clinics, choirs, orchestras, theater groups, a dance company, anart gallery, and firms engaged in architecture and planning, building, finance, insurance, supply,marketing, import, export, shipping, and economic consulting, among others. In accord with scale4

and power advantages, almost a thousand of some 2,400 Movement pe’ilim enjoyed company cars,while in each kibbutz, hundreds of members shared only a few cars (Adar 1975; Gilbo’a 1991; Ilana

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and Avner 1977; Lifshitz 1990; Shapira 1979; Yadlin 1989).5

In addition to the Movements, hundreds of other federative organizations were administeredby some two thousand additional pe’ilim (Shapira n.d.a). If the privilege of company cars signaledMovement power, a higher percentage of pe’ilim having cars must signal a more powerful federativeorganization. A case in point is the eleven commercial-industrial conglomerate organizations calledRegional Enterprises, with some 110 processing plants and farming service facilities, employing8,000–10,000 hired workers (some 2,000 of them seasonal) and administered by some 1,200 pe’ilim(Brum 1986; Niv and Bar-On 1992). Since 1970, the largest, Milu’ot, has proven to be morepowerful than the Movements themselves (Ginat 1979a, 1979b; Lifshitz 1983, 1986; Rosolio 1975).Accordingly, more than 90% of Milu’ot pe’ilim had company cars at their disposal, compared withonly some 40% of Movement pe’ilim, and the situation was quite similar in other powerful RegionalEnterprises (Arieli 1986; Shapira 1978, 1987; Tzur 1980). Yet another influential organizationcategory is composed of dozens of national economic federative organizations with thousands ofhired employees managed by a small number of pe’ilim, each one with a car (Anonymous 1979,1983; Arad 1995; Halevi 1990; Shteinberg 1974; Tzimchi 1999; Tzur 1996). In contrast, in morethan a hundred weaker regional organizations, such as elementary and high schools, colleges, heavytransport federations, and local government firms, only few senior pe’ilim had cars (Adar 1975; Gelb2001:112; Niv and Bar-On 1992; Shepher 1980:165–70).

A federative organization car was a prime status symbol since kibbutz cars were rare; mostlytrucks, vans, and jeeps were used, and drivers changed frequently, while a pa’il consistently drovea specific car, which testified to his status. Car sizes, models, and age were finely graded accordingto rank in a federative organization hierarchy, as well as being emblematic of each federativeorganization’s power and prestige (Adar 1975; Shapira 1979, 1987; Tzur 1980), analogous toBourdieu’s (1977, 1984, 1996) findings for French society. At the top were the Admors, with thelargest, chauffeured cars, and at the bottom were humble pe’ilim of lesser federative organizations,who used public transport or were transported collectively in vans. Lesser pe’ilim of powerfulRegional Enterprises—storekeepers, technicians, office workers, etc.—were ranked a little higher:Five would share a small, Israeli-made, Susita fiberglass car with an 1100 cc engine (Shapira 1978).

Length of job tenure served to stratify pe’ilim less clearly, as some top jobs were short-term,for political or other reasons. If, however, one analyzed career success and continuity instead of jobtenure, the most successful, life-long careers in top-level jobs beneath the level of the Admors werepowerful federative organization heads, Knesset members, and executives of the Histadrut, theJewish Agency, the government, or other bureaucracies on behalf of federative organizations, who6

never returned to the ranks (Arieli 1986; Gelb 2001; Halevi 1990; Lifshitz 1983, 1986; Near1997:161, 180–82, 257; Rosenhak 1988; Shapira 1990, 1992, 2001; Shure 2001; Tzimchi 1999;Vilan 1993). The norm of periodic job rotation, termed rotatzia, meant that tenure of mid-levelpe’ilim was usually shorter; they typically circulated between federative organization and kibbutzoffices, sometimes returning to minor jobs or even to the ranks (Fadida 1972; Helman 1987; Leshem1969; Shapira 1978, 1987, 1992). Lesser pe’ilim usually served a single three- to five-year term andreturned to minor kibbutz offices or the ranks; even this term, however, was longer than that of mostkibbutz officers, and many of these pe’ilim managed hired employees and had privileges and statussymbols unavailable to kibbutz officers (Fadida 1972; Gelb 2001; Shapira 1978, 1987; Topel 1979),except for the few managers of capitalist-like kibbutzim mentioned above. A clear sign of pe’ilimsupremacy was the common failure by kibbutzim to shorten their job tenure (Shapira 1995a;Shepher 1980:168–72).

Researchers Ignored Federative Organizations, Pe’ilim, and Other Outside Officeholders

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The kibbutz is not as we imagine, an isolated community. We belong very much to theoutside, but since members don’t want to sit and discuss our relations with the entities [onthe outside] to which we belong, we are not coping with the problem. In order to explain it,we must recognize it. Maybe we do not want to do that . . . (Kibbutz Kochav member).7

According to Bourdieu’s (1977) conceptualization, the hundreds of kibbutzim and hundreds offederative organizations constitute a single social field. Yet kibbutz members externalized andignored the impact of federative organizations for an obvious reason: Stratified, hierarchic federativeorganizations were diametrically opposed to the egalitarian kibbutz ethos. Almost all researchersfollowed suit, avoiding the study of federative organizations, and thus, these facts were neglected.For instance, Ben-Rafael and Yaar’s (1992:83) list of roles which defined kibbutz members’ statusdid not include members’ high-status roles on the outside, as later noticed by Ben-Rafael himself(1997:141). Likewise, Evens’s (1995) ethnography of Kibbutz Merhavia did not mention pe’ilimor outside officeholders, although KA Admor Yaari, pe’ilim Tilman (1990) and Tzur (1996), andother outside officeholders such as tenured university professors Grol and Yasoor were Merhaviamembers. Accordingly, most researchers ignored their status symbols: cars, “dress” clothes,8

briefcases, home phones, travel abroad, etc. (with the exception of Rosenfeld 1957; Kressel 1974;Shapira 1979, 1987; Topel 1979; and Shepher 1980).

Scholars evaded the study of federative organizations, which resulted in missing the trueextent of stratification of the social field as a whole and also caused erroneous depictions of localstratification. Ben-Rafael and Yaar stated that the upper stratum of a kibbutz comprises 20% of itsmembers (1992:30), but among the some 500 members of Kibbutz Mishmar Ha’emek, nobody cameclose to KA head Hazan’s Admor status (Argaman 1997; Tzachor 1997). KM head Tabenkin andKA head Yaari exhibit similarly high status in their respective kibbutzim (Argaman 1997), as hadPinhas Lavon in Kibbutz Hulda (Kafkafi 1998), Kadish Luz in Degania (Near 1997:182, 251–54),and many others whose local prominence disproved Ben-Rafael and Yaar’s thesis (1992). TheAdmors’ superiority was explained by their charisma (Ben-Rafael 1997:45; Rosolio 1999:23), buttheir use of undemocratic, “Iron Law” power since the 1930s negates this explanation and calls tomind other autocratic commune leaders (Brumann 2000): centralization, conservatism, censorshipof publications, repression of innovators, and privileging themselves and their loyalist pe’ilim(Aharoni 2000; Beilin 1984; Cohen 2000; Kafkafi 1992; Keshet 1995; Kynan 1989; Shapira 2001;Shure 2001; Tzur 1981). Other federative organization heads did the same, but while hundreds ofstudents carried out thousands of studies of kibbutzim, only four have studied federativeorganizations (Avrahami 1993; Hermesh 1975; Rosolio 1975, 1999; Shapira 1978, 1987), and onlyone (myself) has alluded to the Iron Law of Oligarchy. This avoidance was less significant before9

1948, as many pe’ilim were ascetic and were motivated by Zionist ideals, but it became untenableas asceticism diminished (Talmon 1972), stratification seeped from federative organizations into thekibbutzim, and the field became oligarchic owing in part to the norm of rotatzia.

Because they did not study federative organizations, researchers missed the fact that periodicrotatzia of officers, supposedly aimed at preventing oligarchy, actually failed in its mission andenhanced oligarchization. As there were thousands of jobs in federative organizations, officers whowere rotated from kibbutz offices mostly gained federative organization offices, only sometimesreturning to local positions (Fadida 1972; Helman 1987; Leshem 1969; Shapira 1992; Topel 1979).Since rotatzia was formally incorporated into federative organizations, most pe’ilim had to circulatefrom one short-term office to another and therefore needed a new job every few years, whilefederative organization heads and executives controlled jobs or obtained them for clients throughold-boy networks of senior pe’ilim. In accord with Hirschman’s (1970) conceptualization, federative

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organization heads placed loyalists in deputy jobs; thus, being the client of a federative organizationhead was the best guarantee for retaining managerial status (Shapira 1987, 1995a). Clients’dependency enhanced federative organization heads’ power and oligarchic rule, and helped explainthe half-century hegemony of Admors despite their dysfunctional leadership since the 1940s, inaccord with studies by Hirschman (1970, 1982), Hambrick and Fukutomi (1991), and Brumann(2000)—a truly Michelsian nightmare (Shapira 2001, n.d.a, n.d.b).

Because they ignored federative organizations, scholars missed the fact that the pe’ilimviolated the principle of egalitarianism, and the fact that this violation encouraged the same byoutside careerists. Since these privileges negated egalitarianism, they were not mentioned in printuntil the mid-1970s and only rarely afterward, but their existence was later acknowledged ininterviews with kibbutz veterans. For instance, in 1990, David Kahana, a veteran member of KibbutzBeit Alfa, stated that in 1930 he had been a pa’il of the Agricultural Center, a Histadrut subsidiary,and was able to put aside money for a private radio from the weekly expense allowance given forfive-day accommodations in Tel Aviv, while the other hundred or so kibbutz members were servedby a radio located in the dining hall. Biographies of outside careerists, professionals, authors,editors, artists, and senior army officers, among others, made it clear that having jobs outside thekibbutz elevated their status (Aharoni 2000; Cohen 2000; Dagan and Yakir 1995; Gelb 2001;Rosenhak 1988; Tzimchi 1999; Vilan 1993), but unlike my ethnographies they never disclosed the10

fact that careers were boosted by ignoring rotatzia and violated the principles of egalitarianism, asdid pe’ilim (also see Kressel 1974; Shepher 1980). Moreover, when Kibbutz Rama (fictitious nameof a veteran kibbutz with 400 adults and 250 youngsters) decided in the late 1970s that pe’ilim hadto share their cars with other members on weekends, some pe’ilim ignored the decision, as didoutside careerists who had company cars. Likewise, three such careerists for whom Rama hadbought cars which were essential for their jobs justified ignoring the decision by alluding to theviolation by the pe’ilim. Later, some kibbutz officers with cars did the same; thus, most cars in Ramaended up symbolizing the drivers’ high status, all as a consequence of a few pe’ilim who violatedan egalitarian decision.

The impact of federative organizations and pe’ilim on kibbutz stratification was profound.I have provided here a few conspicuous examples of the many that exist (Shapira n.d.a). Now let ussee how kibbutz research missed the existence of stratification.

CREATING AND MAINTAINING THE BLINDNESS An Economist-Sociologist and Anthropologists Provided the Foundation

The economist-sociologist Landshut (1944) conducted research on kibbutzim in 1939–1940.His study, which was, in the main, valid and illuminating, included analysis of the Movements’ideological impact on kibbutzim, but it missed the impact on social stratification and ignored thedominance of Admors and senior pe’ilim, designating local main officers as the supreme kibbutzstratum (1944:88).

The work of three American anthropologists who researched kibbutzim in 1949–1951 canbe criticized as realistic, innocent, ahistoric ethnography (see Comaroff and Comaroff 1992;Hammersley 1992; Van Maanen 1995). They, too, missed the impact of pe’ilim and federativeorganizations, but the differences among them are quite revealing: two are men with prospects foracademic careers at Ivy League universities, and the third is a woman with lesser prospects, fromthe Jewish Board of Guardians in New York. Only the latter, Eva Rosenfeld (1951, 1957), saw someof this impact and the existence of real stratification, by discerning that a few senior pe’ilim werelooked up to as the main kibbutz figures, and she correctly designated them as the top stratum,although she missed recognizing their status symbols, privileges, and power. “The sociologist’s

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misfortune is that . . . the people who have the technical means of appropriating what he says, haveno wish to appropriate it . . . whereas those who would have an interest in appropriating it do nothave the instruments for appropriation” said Bourdieu (1993:23). The two Ivy League facultymembers could have made use of her findings and exposed the existence of stratification by askingquestions about prominent members such as which Movement jobs they held, what advantages theyreceived, how long and how exactly did it impact their local superiority, etc., but they missed herperceptions. Spiro’s Harvard-published ethnography (1955) noted the existence of 12–15 memberswho kept rotating the main kibbutz offices among themselves (p. 25), but though he mentioned theMovement many times (calling it “The Federation”), he did not explain that these members kepttheir status even when out of these particular leadership jobs by circulating to other Movement jobsor other career-enhancing positions (Fadida 1972; Helman 1987; Shapira 1995a). He also missedthe fact that those who did rotate among various positions were juniors vis-à-vis two veteran, seniorpe’ilim who retained their positions throughout: one was the Movement’s main economist, and theother headed Tnuva’s main division, with over a thousand employees. Schwartz (1955:427)11

recognized “10–15” ex-kibbutz officers who held outside “decision-making positions” (i.e., pe’ilim),but he saw none of their accrued status, power, and privileges.

By not probing the impact of the federative organizations on kibbutzim, the four researchpioneers missed how different outside careers led to differential stratification within kibbutzim. Forinstance, the very successful kibbutz I have called Kochav (with almost a thousand inhabitants) wasmore clearly stratified than Spiro’s (1955) Beit Alfa, since Kochav’s two seniormost pe’ilim heldhigher federative organization offices than Beit Alfa’s: one was the veteran head of a very largefederative organization, and the other edited the Movement’s daily newspaper, then spent decadesin the Knesset and became a government minister. In contrast, in Kibbutz Rama, superiority ofveteran senior pe’ilim declined early as they lost high-level federative organization jobs, and as newpower elites became dominant, one composed of economic pe’ilim and ex-pe’ilim, and another ofsuccessful outside careerists (Shapira 2001).

Surveys Missed Social Action But Were Legitimized Academically In the mid-1950s, Hebrew University sociologists entered the scene and dominated kibbutz

studies for decades, headed by the renowned functionalist S. N. Eisenstadt (Ram 1995). Theirsurveys enhanced the blindness, being “disengaged from any concrete situation, . . . record[ing]responses induced by the abstract stimuli of the survey situation as if they were authentic productsof the habitus” (Bourdieu 1990:294). Survey biases remain unknown until they are exposed bynonreactive measures (Yankelovich 1991). This requires extra fieldwork, but senior scholars aredetached from the fieldwork carried out by their juniors; are busy with analyses, writing, andpublication, which lead to fame and academic capital; and therefore usually ignore this requirement(Platt 1976). Alas, because of this division of labor the seniors lack “the profound intuitions gainedfrom personal familiarity” (Bourdieu 1988:3), do not meet “individuals . . . who . . . have beenwaiting there . . . not just to answer questions but to instruct [them] as to which ones to ask” (Geertz1995:61; also see Williams 2000). Bourdieu, for instance, did much of his fieldwork himself(Collins 1989; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:29), but kibbutz sociologists rarely do that, followingthe dominant Anglo-American sociologists who sent junior sociologists to the field (Platt 1976), asI personally experienced as a pa’il of the Kibbutz Research Institute. They used “technologicalwizardry” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:33)—complex statistical analyses that gave their findingsan appearance of objectivity, although these were often “tape spinning” that explained nothing(Whyte 1992:9; also Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:31). Surveys enhanced the dominance oftheoreticists over empiricists (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992): Senior theoreticists chose a communal

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society paradigm, and junior empiricists followed suit; their survey questions and analyses ignoredfederative organizations and pe’ilim, and the copious evidence of stratification was missed.

Reviewers Missed Cardinal Errors, Sanctioned the Wrong Paradigm Early kibbutz studies gained academic recognition: works were sanctioned by the scientific

community and published by prestigious journals and publishing houses. One might ask: Why didreviewers not call into question the designation of local officers as constituting the top stratum,especially after Rosenfeld (1951) pointed out the superiority of members who belonged to kibbutzmovement leadership, and Landshut (1944) and Spiro (1955) both showed the power of theMovements over kibbutzim? Why did reviewers approve analyses of such a highly organizednational social movement with so many large, hierarchic and oligarchic federative organizations,with no reference to large organization classics and theories of social movements, political parties,and power elites?

Though a full answer to this question must await further study, its contours are quite clear:Reviewers approved inadequate ethnographies and surveys that excluded federative organizationsbecause of their remoteness from the field and the dominance of Anglo-American functionalistsociology. Lacking “the profound intuitions gained from personal familiarity” (Bourdieu 1988:3;also see Shokeid 2001), reviewers either did not suspect that involvement of the kibbutz in the largersociety impacted stratification, or they missed the difference between the social field of the kibbutzand other communal societies and did not reconsider their paradigm. As students who ignoredfederative organizations gained epistemic authority (Gieryn 1999), this paradigm became moreentrenched, all the more so since no one studied federative organizations until the 1970s and thenonly four social scientists did such research.

Since the 1960s, however, some researchers and reviewers have themselves been kibbutzmembers who were intimately familiar with the field. Why were they also blind? One answer is theabove-mentioned dominance of functional sociologists, whose communitarian epistemic culture(Knorr-Cetina 1999) enhanced conformity, and who nurtured or sponsored almost all kibbutz-member students up to the 1970s, when critics appeared at Tel Aviv University. Their criticism,however, had little effect on functionalists’ dominance, since few studied federative organizationsor managed to publish findings in respected, English-language outlets. The few who did publisheither missed federative organizations (e.g., Evens 1995), or their full impact (e.g., Shepher 1980).Shepher (1980) was close to exposing the connection when he considered the problems caused byoutside office-holding and its negative impact on egalitarianism and democracy. However, asdiscussed below, it is very difficult to introduce a new paradigm in ethnography (Hammersley1992), and without it, he largely missed federative organizations’ impact on stratification.

A second answer is the closely knit networks of the small country in which kibbutzresearchers and members were enmeshed. Kibbutz members externalized federative organizationsand ignored their impact, as noted above; the egalitarian image helped justify their own choice ofkibbutz life. By following suit, an academic enmeshed in their network expressed his/her sympathyfor them and their cause. This explanation is supported by the fact that the few studies of federativeorganizations were made solely by kibbutz members; they did not have to prove such sympathy, andhence could study federative organizations relatively freely, unlike outsiders, whose interest instratified federative organizations was suspiciously perceived as aimed at ruining kibbutzim’segalitarian image.

A third answer is that even erroneous paradigms serve scientists’ needs. A paradigm providesa discipline with an organization that is basically social, unifying members around a commonenterprise of dominating a field of study (Collins 1975:493–96). Bourdieu pointed out that

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“intellectuals have a much greater than average capacity to transform their spontaneous sociology,that is, their self-interested vision of the social world, into the appearance of a scientific sociology”(quoted in Wacquant 1989:4). Kibbutz member researchers had a self-interested vision of thekibbutz as egalitarian, and their first cohort was nurtured by dominant functionalists who held thisvision. Through the capacity mentioned by Bourdieu, they used the wrong paradigm, turned theirspontaneous egalitarian view of the kibbutz social field into an appearance of scientific sociology,and the dominant scientific coalition rewarded them by having their writings published andpromoting them to respected professorships. As reviewers, they then suppressed critical scholarsfrom Tel Aviv. A good example is the vehement rejection of Kressel’s excellent ethnography (1974,1983) by kibbutz-member sociologists of the dominant coalition (Ben-David 1975; Shepher 1975);hence, it was not published in English and was mostly neglected.

Kibbutz Prestige, Academic Capital Seeking, and Federative Organization Heads’ Power Academicians and intellectuals, like other social agents, seek cultural and social capital inter

alia by attaching themselves to prestigious sectors of society (Bourdieu 1988; Bourdieu andWacquant 1992:108–9). This was also true of kibbutz researchers and helps explain the lack ofconsideration of impacts of federative organizations on kibbutzim: federative organizations wereoligarchic; their inclusion would have largely ruined the kibbutz image of egalitarian society,whereas exclusion kept this image intact. The structuring of pe’ilut (being a pa’il) as an egalitarianrole helped maintain the wrong image: no differences in salaries, and rotatzia of most pe’ilim,12

which supposedly prevented oligarchy. Federative organization heads with lengthy tenures wererelatively few and easily overlooked by scholars, and omission of federative organizations fromresearch masked their dominance and the way in which circulation of most pe’ilim among variouspositions enhanced stratification instead of curbing it.

A complementary explanation for excluding the study and evading the impact of federativeorganizations was the power of local leaders, who could bar access to kibbutzim. Indeed, withaccumulation of power and oligarchization, control of access became stricter (Kressel 2000:31). Ilearned of this both from my own experience and from that of fellow graduate students who wantedto study federative organizations but could not gain access. This is supported by the fact that, untilthe 1990s, only the Regional Enterprises had been studied; they are the federative organizationsclosest to kibbutzim and are visited daily by a host of members for a variety of purposes, so thatbarring entrance only to kibbutz-member researchers was not easy, and either was not attempted orfailed, as in my case.

Senior social scientists have great symbolic power and many resources at their disposal. Butthe fact that the subject of the first large-scale sociological study (Talmon 1972) was the IhudMovement, which lacks a powerful leadership like that of Admors (Near 1997), supports theexplanation that research can be stymied by powerful leaders. Senior researchers knew of or couldfeel federative organization leaders’ interest in excluding themselves from study and the leverageof their power in terms of control of funds for research and publications; control over lecturing inkibbutzim, their colleges, seminars, and cultural clubs; and control over publishing outlets (Aharoni2000; Keshet 1995; Shure 2001; Tzachor 1997). In order to see that the study of federativeorganizations was essential and worth entering into conflict with such powerful leaders, it wasnecessary to connect federative organizations etiologically to kibbutz processes. But membersmasked this connection, aimed at maintaining an egalitarian image, and their radical young leadersignored federative organization heads’ hegemony for other reasons. Ethnographers might haveexposed this hegemony, and some indeed partially did (e.g., Fadida 1972; Kressel 1974; Shepher1980; Topel 1979), but in the absence of a new paradigm that included federative organizations as

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part of the social field, their evasion did not cease.

Without Sociological Theory, Historians Failed to Recognize Oligarchic ChangeThe historian’s task is to study societal changes and their causes. Emmanuel Marx

(1985:141) pointed out “an irony in that the historian is used to following processes, although thedata flow to him is usually not abundant, while the anthropologist, who has rich data about changes,does not always bother to describe them.” Furthermore, “The separation of sociology and historyis a disastrous division, and one totally devoid of epistemological justification” (Bourdieu andWacquant 1992:90). Sociologists and anthropologists who studied kibbutzim lacked a historicalperspective of federative organizations’ oligarchization, while historians could have discerned thischange had they used sociological theories to integrate their observations. Near (1997:329)discerned the Admors’ lack of political success dating from 1936, and Kafkafi (1992:125) found thatKM head Tabenkin had initiated “cadre seminars” to enhance his power as early as 1937. However,in order to expose oligarchic rule they would have had to combine these findings with the Admors’other failures and power perpetuation efforts, the centralization of Movement control, censorshipof publications, granting of privileges to assure conformity of pe’ilim, conservatism, promotion ofloyalists and suppression of innovators, as well as myopic leftism, such as admiration of Stalin’sdictatorship, which legitimized autocracy. Alas, without sociological theories applied to leaders’dysfunction and the oligarchic shift to consolidate personal gains, historians failed to recognize thatthis leftism was aimed at self-perpetuation of power. Rather it was viewed as a political error (Near1997:70), although it would have been inconceivable for very experienced leaders to commit suchan error (Shapira n.d.b).

THE LONG ROAD TO EXPOSING THE BLINDNESSEthnography has a hard time when a new theory is required (Hammersley 1992). Ethnographers’main problem is “Finding our feet, . . . trying to formulate the basis on which one imagines, . . .[ethnographic] writing consists as scientific endeavor” (Geertz 1973:13). In order to find the basisfor a proper interpretation of cultures, ethnographers must choose the most significant facts andactivities from among the huge variety they observe. The difficulty in choosing results from the factthat every culture “is a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposedupon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit, and [theethnographer] must contrive somehow first to grasp and then to render them” (1973:10). A “cultureconsists of socially established structures of meaning in terms of which people do” things (1973:12);these structures are created by behaviors influenced by a variety of factors and the “superimposedupon or knotted” collection of complex conceptual structures. Only with a firm basis for theirseparation, identification, and grasping of their intertwining can one understand how these meaningstructures were created, influenced actors’ views and actions, and how actions strengthened orsubverted these structures.

Finding one’s feet in the kibbutz social field was difficult because its two cultural types,kibbutzim and federative organizations, have contradictory meaning structures and norms thatsubvert one another. According to Bourdieu (1990:86), “symbolic systems owe their practicalcoherence . . . on the one hand, their unity and their regularities, and on the other, their ‘fussiness’and irregularities and even incoherences . . . to the fact that they are the product of practices that canfulfill their practical functions only in so far as they implement . . . principles that are not onlycoherent . . . and compatible with the objective conditions—but also practical . . . easy to master anduse.” Federatively organized, egalitarian and democratic communes were a practical solution for theharsh conditions of the Jewish nation’s rebuilding effort. Norms that would ensure democratic

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succession of federative organization heads, however, were not practiced, as in other Zionist organs.An egalitarian image was maintained by pe’ilim being unpaid or paid equally, and by rotatzia.Exclusion of federative organizations from the kibbutz discourse masked their oligarchicstratification. Without penetrating this mask, one could not “find one’s feet” in the mix ofcontradictory ethos types and cultures.

Tel Aviv University students served as critics of Hebrew University’s dominant coalition.The epistemic cultures of the critics were individualistic, whereas those of the dominant coalitionwere communitarian (Knorr-Cetina 1999). Communitarian cultures enhance conformity, whileindividualistic ones promote critical thinking. The success of a new paradigm, however, requiresan epistemological robustness hardly achievable by a lone researcher (Bourdieu and Wacquant1992:187–97). The works of the critics were crucial for the exposure of the blindness, but whilesome studied only federative organizations (e.g., Rosolio 1975; Shapira 1978, 1987; Beilin 1984;Kanari 1989; Kynan 1989; Kafkafi 1992; Keshet 1995), others studied only kibbutzim (e.g., Fadida1972; Kressel 1974; Topel 1979; Shepher 1980). Marx (1985:147) has written: “The hardest partof [ethnographic] research is discerning the context of phenomena.” Both groups missed this partor did not integrate contexts with texts and their syntax (Hazan 1995), and as explained above, otheracademics and kibbutz members did not alert them to this oversight.

Upon reflection, I overcame this oversight by raising questions not previously explored andby being motivated to persevere over the long process involved in overcoming the existingparadigm. My aim was to solve problems in my own kibbutz, rather than to obtain an academiccareer. I held public offices in my kibbutz and managerial jobs in its factory, and I perceived graveproblems associated with a lack of egalitarianism and democracy. Sociological education seemedthe best path for coping with them, so I finished a BA at Tel Aviv University, but additionalexecutive experience proved that further education was required. I performed ethnographic researchfor my MA thesis at a Regional Enterprises federative organization. As a fellow of the KibbutzResearch Institute, I found its surveys to be of no help, in contrast to the above-mentionedethnography and other studies I had done at kibbutz plants on behalf of the Kibbutz IndustryAssociation (Shapira 1980). However, the Institute rejected my study of federative organizationsas not being part of its mission, so I left to investigate the Regional Enterprises on my own accordto pursue a Ph.D.

Even though my investigation exposed many secrets of mismanagement, I missed the maincontext: older, larger, oligarchic national economic federative organizations which shaped theircapitalist culture. I erred in blaming the managers for this culture and tried to alert kibbutzim to thehigh price they were paying for it, but this was futile: Admors had reconciled themselves to thisculture and the Movements used many of its norms, while the dependency of kibbutz officers on theEnterprises’ heads for future jobs deterred them from joining my critique (although in private theymostly agreed with me). These heads, for their part, saw to it that my findings received minimalpublicity. Without publicity, I had no feedback to alert me to the above-mentioned context, and Imissed another crucial point: namely, that the norm of rotatzia actually enhanced federativeorganization heads’ power and the oligarchic process by enhancing patronage of the rotatingofficeholders.

Essential Managerial Habitus Lengthened the Road to Exposure My managerial habitus led me to search for effectiveness and efficiency in the Regional

Enterprises, but instead I found pe’ilim who were mostly ignoring these aims, seeking image-creation and career advancement. This has been common in states and armies that use rotatzia and“parachuting”—appointment of outsiders who lack essential local knowledge. It was explicable

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given their short terms, vulnerable status, and limited power in contrast to entrenched insiders(Chow 1966; Gabriel and Savage 1981; Ho 1962; Shapira 1987; Vald 1987).

My analysis pointed to a plausible alternative that would have made officers’ status lessvulnerable without encouraging oligarchy, but this did not interest kibbutz movement leaders, whowere conservative loyalists of the old guard and lacking in critical thinking, in accord withHirschman (1970; see Avrahami 1993); nor did it interest academics who did not like the appliednotion of seeking solutions. One journal reviewer criticized one of my articles, claiming that it wasillegitimate to both analyze a problem and suggest a solution. Other reasons for rejections seemedto be sociologists’ and behaviorists’ neglect of organizational anthropology (Bate 1997) and thedominance of functionalist sociology (Ram 1995). However, a few anthropologist mentors andkibbutz-member colleagues strengthened my belief in my findings and urged me to continue.

I decided to study rotatzia inside a kibbutz in an effort to pinpoint its effects without theconfounding effect of “parachuting.” This study required only modest funds and an abundance oftime, which I obtained by minimizing efforts to publish (although this questionable move preventedacademic advancement and thus limited the time available for research). For a year and a half Istudied Kibbutz Kochav, visiting two days a week, interviewed 123 members and ex-members, andstudied its archival records. I was able to document the fact that use of the rotatzia was problematic,that it enhanced patrons’ power; promoted conservative, ineffective loyalists; and demoted,sidetracked, or caused the exit of effective, creative radicals whose innovations, such as the sharingof cars and plant shift-work, enhanced both egalitarianism and economic success (Shapira 1990).Later ethnographies substantiated this finding: the early adoption of the rotatzia by two youngerkibbutzim made them ultra-conservative and less efficient and effective than Kochav, which adoptedthe norm much later in its development. Their patrons obstructed democracy by means unknown inKochav, causing a mass exodus and a brain-drain that enhanced patrons’ rule but crippled thekibbutzim.

This self-serving rule alerted me to powerholders’ morality. A fourth case of a veteran,conservative, mediocre kibbutz further proved that powerholders with low morality ruined trust,democracy, effectiveness, and progress, as in Banfield’s (1958) “backward” Italian village, and thispointed to the morality side of the Iron Law of Oligarchy, power self-perpetuation being a self-serving behavior. Then I discerned that Kochav patrons were highly moral as local leaders, advancedkibbutz interests rather than their own, and even as veteran federative organization oligarchs, theynever used undemocratic means to thwart young radicals’ solutions for promoting egalitarianism,in contrast to the patrons I had documented in other cases. This was explicable by the fact thatKochav’s patrons had attained their high rank owing to radicalism, rather than by conservativeloyalty to federative organization heads, the means by which other patrons advanced. Then I realizedhow fatal the omission of federative organization studies was for understanding kibbutzim, anddiscerned scholars’ blindness to stratification (Shapira 2001).

The Long Road’s Lessons: Habitus and Motivation as Critical Factors The long road to exposure emphasizes the importance of continuous fieldwork by the social

scientist (Collins 1989:461; Shokeid 2001), and the critical factor of proper motivation forovercoming the frustrations of a long, lonely journey toward “finding one’s feet” and properlyinterpreting the complex mix of a system’s cultures. Mistakes arising from working alone and thebiases of one’s habitus are inevitable; thus, unprejudiced recording of social facts, analysis ofsubtleties, adherence to primary material, and digging for actors’ deeper motives are essential(Kressel 1996). This methodology may not unravel the complexity of conflicting cultures, thoughit helps to prevent mistakes. One must find the “gravity” of the field (Bourdieu and Wacquant

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1992:17), but in my case there were two opposing “gravities”: the socialist one of the kibbutz’sideas, ethos, and communal culture, and the capitalist one of Israeli society, economic federativeorganizations, and many kibbutz factories (Cohen 1978; Kressel 1974). The latter explains, forinstance, why, from their beginnings in the early 1940s, kibbutz plants used hired labor despite theAdmors’ objections. The context of a particular social field may reverse a factor’s impact: Amanager coming from the outside in a typical organization tends to innovate more than a loyalistwho was promoted from the inside, but not in a context where rotatzia and “parachutings” reign. Insuch a field, new managers tend towards conservatism as, like paratroopers in alien lands, they areaiming at survival in the face of meager knowledge and other intangible capital, and receive littletrust and help from knowledgeable, but entrenched, insiders (Chow 1966; Ho 1962; Shapira 1987,1995b).

Further problems of interpretation stem from the fact that the boundaries of a field are“always at stake in the field itself” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:100), and its discourse excludeselements unfavorable to leaders. Exposure of this exclusion is not simple, as it requires identifyingthe contexts of a field’s cultures and their incoherences (Bourdieu 1990:86). One must analyze theexistential needs each of the field’s cultures met (Vaughan 1996:64); their problems, technologicalalternatives, and plausible alternative solutions (Perrow 1970; Hawthorn 1991); the concepts andmeaning structures that support or subvert a chosen alternative; and the power structures and actors’interests that explain the choice. How the high morality of Kochav’s patrons explains its creativitywas discerned only against the background of low-morality, conservative, capitalist imitators in thethree other kibbutzim. My four ethnographic studies were groundbreaking after so many prior worksaimed at “understanding at the expense of seeing” (Linstead et al. 1996:7). Bourdieu (1990:16)wrote:

scientific practice never takes the form of an inevitable sequence of miraculous intellectualacts. . . . It is not easy . . . to describe the long effort applied to oneself, which little by littleleads to the conversion of one whole view of action and the social world that is presupposedby ‘observation’ of facts that are totally new, because they were totally invisible to theprevious view.

A different habitus might have enabled a shorter route to exposure, but additional supportfor the hypothesis that even this would have been very long stems from Whyte’s (1992) claim thatmotivation for social action is essential for generating good social theory. Such a motivation is oftenborn in a non-academic setting, involving the search for a deeper understanding of problems in orderto find radically better solutions, rather than academic capital that can be gained by other means(Bourdieu 1988). As a latecomer, I had to invest much work to catch up and to overcomepredecessors’ mistakes by integrating my findings with those of critically minded students of alldisciplines. Furthermore, this habitus did not prevent costly mistakes, but rather provided a differentperspective and motivation to continue, despite failures and little support from academic institutions.

Nobel laureate Herbert Simon (1992) supports this assertion from another angle: The greatcomplexity of modern organizations requires lengthy research, like zoologists who have studied thecomplexity of animals for centuries. Lengthy investment is also needed because of the reflexivityand epistemological robustness required: Science is a collective enterprise; criticism of one’s workby colleagues is essential for making the researcher reflexive to the social and intellectualunconscious embedded in one’s analytical tools (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), yet critique mayinduce defensiveness. Anthropology is capable of overcoming these impediments, provided one ismotivated to complete the many ethnographies of various organizational “species” of a complex

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field, as well as extensive learning of findings by all social sciences and the humanities, in order tofind a new theory which overcomes gross mistakes embedded in an older one, leading to a socialaction theory hitherto deemed implausible (Whyte 1992).

CONCLUSIONS“Nothing is more practical in science than a good theory,” stated the psychologist Kurt Lewin. Agood theory of stratification would be especially relevant for explaining the kibbutz, the product ofa social movement that seeks both equality and growth, which tends to inequality. In every knownsociety, careers are chosen in order to gain prestige and status (Goldschmidt 1990), but kibbutzresearchers missed elite members’ careers by avoiding study of federative organizations and otheroutside hierarchies, through which their careers were advanced. Evasion maintained the communalsociety paradigm at the expense of a social movement paradigm, and the neglect of theories of largeorganizations and elites. Also missed were the surrender of kibbutz egalitarianism to federativeorganization stratification; rotatzia’s turning into circulation and enhancing oligarchy; the corrosionof trust and democracy by power and by tangible and intangible capital accumulated in outside jobs;continuity of leaders owing to the Iron Law engendering capitalist norms, conservatism, andautocracy (Brumann 2000); leftist reverence of Stalin’s dictatorship enhancing autocracy; rotatziaencouraging negative selection of radicals for promotion (Hirschman 1970), and “parachutings” thatinhibited the creative innovation so vital for democratic work organizations (Stryjan 1989). Withouta paradigm suited to this complex organizational field, each study found a different type ofstratification explained by a different etiology, and none tried a comprehensive comparison of allfindings in their search for an overall explanation.

The significance of this cannot be exaggerated. Stratification was sought in the flatorganizational structures of kibbutzim with short-term office tenure, while ignoring the oligarchicfederative organizations and other bureaucracies which stratified kibbutz elites. The dynamics ofthe kibbutz social field and its various cultures were wrongly explained, its strata and their interestsmisconstrued, as were patronage and cliques, the brain-drain and the decline in trust, egalitarianism,and democracy. Researchers did not connect the lowering of leaders’ morality with extended jobtenure owing to the Iron Law of Oligarchy, ineffectiveness, loss of faith in the kibbutz ethos, andintroduction of capitalist elements. The sociologists’ task is to penetrate formal definitions and probewhat is hidden behind fronts presented by social entities (Berger 1966: chap. 2), but kibbutzsociologists evaded this task. Instead of problematizing the conflicting cultures of federativeorganizations and kibbutzim, and asking how pe’ilim worked within these two separate culturessimultaneously, scholars evaded these problem domains by adhering to the formal status offederative organizations as external to kibbutzim. Without penetrating this formality, research wentastray, the debt crisis was not anticipated, nor was the adoption of capitalist norms it caused. I didnot anticipate its scope and exact timing, but I believe I have correctly identified the process and itsrate.

The predictive capacity of this theory has resulted from the study of my own society, bymethods that have proved capable of penetrating the problems that intrigued me owing to myexecutive habitus, enabling me to combine “information gathered by . . . scientific inquiry with theprofound intuitions gained from personal familiarity” (Bourdieu 1988:3). I studied a heretoforeignored part of the field, and thus cultural differences between federative organizations andkibbutzim brought new insights (in accord with Hazan 1995). These insights caused mymarginalization and fewer research opportunities, yet they encouraged further fieldwork (at theexpense of publishing), out of my interest in an action theory. Continued fieldwork triangulatedcritical questions, made possible an integrative view of the field, exposed its contradicting gravities,

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and enabled interpretation of its cultures. Thus, a new paradigm emerged and exposed blindness tostratification.

This ability to uncover is thus explained by aiming at the betterment of one’s own society,rather than aiming for academic capital which can be gained by other means (Bourdieu 1988), andby analyses that expose various effects, without an integrative theory of a field and its embeddednessin societal contexts (Marx 1985; Wallerstein 2004). The eminent scholar Whyte (1992) is right:creation of such a theory requires research striving for the type of explanations that promote action(e.g., Hammersley 1992). It means integration of the many factors playing in a complex field, andaccounting for coherences, incoherences, and negations within and among its cultures’ variouspractices. Exposing the dynamics of its cultures requires more than interpretation of a set ofstructures of meaning, which are “control mechanisms . . . for the governing of behavior” (Geertz1973:44); each of its cultures has another set of structures, owing to different practical needs anddifferent collections of solutions engendered by different histories and contingencies, but the controlmechanism used by leaders, whether trust or coercion, is indeed the decisive factor (DePree 1990;Dore 1973; Fox 1974; Guest 1962; Shapira 1987). Trust is expected of leaders in democracies, buteconomies of scale engender bureaucracy, where coercion is mostly camouflaged: managers’ self-serving decisions are masked as serving public aims and explained by objective requirements(Dalton 1959), while unwanted, yet more plausible solutions are concealed or rejected as unrealistic(Hawthorn 1991). Bringing these solutions to light, with their advantages for the public comparedto managers’ choices, exposes the reason for coercion: distrust of and resistance to self-servingmanagers’ solutions.

Managers who seek personal interests tend to hierarchy and coercion, to conservatism orimitation, while seekers of effectiveness, efficiency, and advancement of public aims by newsolutions tend to lead by trust, egalitarianism, sincerity, and openness toward subordinates (DePree1990; Graham 1991; O’Toole 1999; Shapira 1987, 1995b; Sieff 1988). In a complex organizationalfield, one must study social action by the main actors in depth—heads, officers, and experts, whosepower creates obstacles to research (Dalton 1964), but such research is essential since they makecritical decisions, create, imitate or bar solutions, dominate discourses, and shape a field’s cultures.Their real aims, hopes, and fears are crucial (Maccoby 1976), and exposing them requires viewingthe world through their eyes. As the sages of old said: “Do not judge others until you are in theirposition.” Ethnographers cannot take the place of leaders, but they can come close, and maypenetrate their secrets if enough cultures in a complex field are studied. Since professionalism leadsto restricted vision and a rigid paradigm (Kuhn 1962:64), one must extensively consult otherdisciplines in both the social sciences and the humanities (Wallerstein 2004), aiming at epistemicreflexivity and robustness (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Even then he may not gain a predictivecapacity, but only a proper clinical inference (Geertz 1973:26), but this will prevent master blindnessto reality as that of kibbutz research.

Bate (1997) is right: the cultural “polyphony” of organizations must be unraveled, but it isthe powerholders who orchestrate the “polyphonies” that must be understood. Without penetratingtheir secrets one cannot fully understand a “polyphony,” while their power and capital are majorobstacles for penetration and require a much greater effort than usual ethnography. As shown here,explaining the variety of cultures in a complex organizational field of large and powerful socialmovements can require an even greater investment than the twenty years invested by Van Wolferen(1989) in exposing power in Japanese society. As fields of organizations, social movements, andpower elites are becoming more and more complex, and the danger of blindness is only but growing,avoiding blindness requires new measures for encouraging and rewarding such huge investments.Scholarly careers must be viewed differently, seeking new career types that encourage periods of

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social action in which collaboration with non-academic innovators is enhanced (Whyte 1992). Myfindings support a critique of anthropology (see Comaroff and Comaroff 1992; Hammersley 1992;Van Maanen 1995), and Wallerstein’s (2004) critique of disciplinary divisions among socialsciences and the humanities. These divisions in the study of the kibbutz have hindered scientificprogress, enhanced continued dominance of functionalists despite ample findings by critical studentswho disproved them, and helped to prevent publication of critical works by respectable outlets.Hence, a revision of the practices of publication decision-making to diminish the suppression ofradical critical thinkers by dominant scientific coalitions is needed.

NOTES 1. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Israeli Sociological Society Annual

Conference, the Conference of Kibbutz Researchers, and the Israeli Anthropological AssociationAnnual Conference. I wish to thank Emanuel Marx, Gideon M. Kressel, Ofra Greenberg, Daniel De-Mal’ach, Yossi Shavit, Esther Hertzog, Efrat Noni-Weiss, Moti Regev, Daniel Berslau, VictorFridman, Martin Katt, Barbara Doron, and two anonymous JAR reviewers for their helpfulcomments on earlier versions of this paper. This version was heavily edited by L. G. Straus and theJAR copyeditor.

2. Admor is the Hebrew acronym for “our lord, teacher and rabbi” (Jewish religious master).The courts are based on Eastern European Jewish (Hasidic) models.

3. The General Labour Federation, the umbrella organization of socialist Zionist movementsand labor unions.

4. The full list is much longer; Sack 1999 alone mentions over 50 KM subsidiaries. 5. Numbers are imprecise owing to the lack of available data. 6. The Jewish Agency is the operative bureaucracy of the World Zionist Organization. 7. Kochav is a fictitious name I gave to a large and successful veteran kibbutz (Shapira 1990,

2001). 8. Better clothes were worn by ordinary members only after work (Spiro 1955:163). 9. First elucidated by the German sociologist Robert Michels, the Iron Law of Oligarchy

states that large, complex organizations eventually develop a leadership that tends toward oligarchyas it becomes more interested in preserving its own power than in further the goals of the group.Michels says that this tendency is supported by the fact that delegation of authority and decision-making is necessary in any organization, but that it leads to the development of bases of knowledge,skills, and resources within the leadership which serves to entrench the leaders in office. He sees aninherent tension between the equality of democracy and the specialization of bureaucracy.

10. Emanuel Marx had to remind me of the significance of this category of kibbutz members.11. Tnuva was the national agricultural products marketing federative organization owned

by all kibbutzim and moshavim (agricultural cooperatives). 12. Salaries of cabinet ministers, Knesset members, Histadrut officials, etc., were paid to

Movements’ coffers; senior pe’ilim did not enjoy them personally.

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